Exploring Crime, Deviance, and Control

Hello everybody, we have a new guest here. Finally I have the whiteboard so we are getting closer to the real experience. Today we are going to talk about crime, deviance and social control. This is a new chapter where we are going to analyze the complexities of how society decides what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. We have to define the three concepts that are making this chapter. Deviance, crime and social control. So deviance is everything that we do that goes against social expectations. Social control are all the tools and strategies that society uses to avoid deviance. Tools and strategies. And some... of those strategies are the actual laws that define what kind of deviant act is actually a crime let's start one by one deviance we are all deviant at some point okay the moment we are arriving late the moment we are behaving remember when we were talking about the roles behaving in a masculine way if we are women or in a feminine way if we are men. Every time we cross the street without waiting for the traffic light to be red. Okay so those are like kind of mild deviants although deviants are... deviant behaviors are worse like we can be actual criminals, we can kill someone, etc. But deviants according to our friend Emil Durkheim is very linked to the idea of eunami. Remember that enemy was connected with that loss of direction once society has changed its values. The moment we feel disconnected from society, we also care less about if we are really obedient or if we are in conformity with that society. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. According to Emil Durkheim, deviance has two functions. One is to create order because it is important that we know what is expected and what is not, how to behave, how to be in compliance with all those norms that our society has. Remember when we were studying culture that we were talking about norms? Norms are relevant again. The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. It is important for us to know... that there's an order, that there are some norms, that the moment we go into the streets nobody's going to kill us because if they kill us they will pay for that so people will refrain themselves to commit that kind of crime. And the same about treating or mistreating people. The norm is that you treat properly everybody so every time we go to the streets we feel that we are safe because most of the people know the norms. Okay so that's the first function. Careful because it's good to have norms but sometimes the norms are Going behind what society actually wants. Remember that we were saying that society tends to be conservative and we are evolving and we have to push society a little bit further to represent our actual values. They say stay down and we stand up. Shots me on the ground, the camera panned up. King pointed to the mountaintop and we ran up. When we want to change society, we may push the norms that we have. We may... It changed the understanding of what is deviant and what is not. Think about all the civil rights movements, they were changing the law, they were changing discriminating laws. When we achieved equal marriage, we were also changing the law. Before that, it was a deviant act to be a gay couple. Before it comes, it will be out, it will be out. Without leaving the functionalist approach, if we talk about deviance, it is very important that we mention this guy, Robert Merton. He was kind of breaking down the idea of committing a deviant act in several categories. We have a chart that is based on the goals. of society regarding whatever and the means that society considers that are the right ones to achieve those goals. So, according to Robert M. In the Merton, we have an only way of being non-debian, that is what we call conformity. That means that we... Agree with the goals and we agree with the means. Let's think about how what is the way of being successful in America Everybody wants to be successful. We assume that we all want that and the means are supposed to be working very hard and Achieving and succeeding to do what you have to do and then you become like in conformity with the American dream Okay, that would be the only non-deviant behavior non-deviant Now we are going to start to talk about deviant behaviors. If we share the goal, meaning that you want to be successful, but you don't want to work hard, let's say that you rob a bank because you want the money and have that luxurious life, or maybe you drop school but you become a very famous person, or again, Kim Kardashian, okay? She's very successful. But in a very different way, it's not the example of American Dream. She's kind of doing nothing and she's still very very famous. That is what we call innovation. You are creating a new way of being successful. Okay, this is, sorry, this is all deviant. Okay, innovation. The same about Donald Trump. Donald Trump, you like him or not. He created a new way of becoming the American president. He created a campaign that was based in politically incorrect way of doing things. He was delivering messages through Twitter instead of the regular press release. So he created a new way of becoming politically successful because he created new means for that. We have other example that is when you... Share the means but you don't share the goals. You don't care about success but the truth is that you are working very hard. What's the point? That is what we call ritualism. It means that you are doing things even if you don't believe in that. You're basically... you go with the flow. So you don't want to fulfill the American dream but the truth is that the only way of surviving or the way you were taught to do things, it was working hard. It's not that you believe... in the system of meritocracy but what's the option? We have someone that is actually against the goals and against the means. Okay, retweetism is when you don't share the goals, you don't share the means, so you basically don't work and don't want to be successful, so you decide to leave out the food stamps or the unemployment fund or just trying to get some welfare. money, like giving your back to society. And finally we have where you are against the goals and the means but you work into creating new goals and new means. That is rebellion. I always use the example of the hippies. The hippies in the 60s, they were against capitalism and they were against the war, they were against family values, so they created their own way of living. They were together in the same village or the same house. Like family was something more common, like people were kids like the children of almost everybody. They were against Vietnam war, they were against the market so they were cultivating their own tomatoes and they have they were having their own sheep so they could have a sustainable life. Remember this connects with the concept of counterculture that we explained before. Let's use other example. You know that I like to use love to explain almost everything. So think that you have to be in love when you are young and you have to marry. Okay, the goal is to be in love, to satisfy your sentimental life. The mean is to marry, have the best wedding ever. Okay, so let's say that you believe in love, okay, but you don't necessarily think that you have to be young to be in love or you don't want to get married. You live with your... partner from so many years ago but you didn't feel the need to go to a church or even to the city clerk to declare your love official. Let's say the other way around. You don't believe in God. In love, but at some point you realize that you were like following the flow and you marry someone You can be the retreatist you can be retreated of love, you don't believe in love, you don't even try, you don't open your Tinder profile every time someone is flirting with you, you are not interested at all, etc. Or regarding rebellion, imagine that you don't believe in love and you don't like the way it is conceived in our society, but you want to create a different system of love relationships based maybe on friendship or based maybe in living four people and creating a family all together and you try to re-evaluate you make the system accept like friendship relationships as official with benefits or to include as your husband or wife three people instead of just one it's about just feeding or not feeding the way society understands what are the goals and what are the means to achieve those goals okay i really like this part Just saying. When I talk about social control, as I was saying before, is that all the tools and strategies that society is displaying to avoid our deviant acts. Sometimes social control can be formal, and the same when we were talking about the norms in culture, this means that we have some laws, okay? You can go to jail if you don't follow the rules. But we also have informal. Society doesn't want us to be deviant. Society wants us to be predictable, okay? So we don't create surprise in society that always unbalances a little bit our social dynamic. Think about how your family is trying to make you study according to All your relatives, okay? If your father was a doctor and your grandfather was a doctor, they want you to be a doctor. You have forgotten. No, you have forgotten who you are. So have forgotten me. If you are used to have a certain haircut and you decide one day to change it, people may bully you. Or the other way around. They may tell you that they like it. okay because you look more like how they expect you to look it's also very connected with the idea of sanctions okay all the crimes are sanctioned but also the minimum deviant acts are are subject to be sanctioned as well now with the coronavirus situation they are thinking about finding people for being hanging out in the parks, groups that more than two people. Okay, so that would be a formal social way of social control. Of course, it's not the same as committing a crime, but still is formal. If you think about the idea of fining people because they are in the parks, we understand, we think that it's reasonable that the state is trying to control the coronavirus spread. So they decide to repress that kind of behavior. So we will be in conformity. But we also consider that they are right, that that social control measure makes sense, so we follow that rule, because we are actually convinced that that's the best thing to do for us and for our society. So that's conformity. But of course, sometimes we disagree with the law, or we disagree with the social control. There's a difference between being in conformity with all those rules or all that social control and obey the social control because we may disagree but we don't want to get into trouble and this is almost the only chapter that is more making putting more weight on interactionism than in functionalism and conflict theory. The first theory that we are going to mention from the interactionist point of view is the cultural Transmission theory of deviance. The environment that we are raised in. Remember if you have seen the movie La Haine, how they were in those ghettos, in those projects where... There's no way out. Everything that you want to do in order to be like to do something has to do with drug dealing with violence you are perceiving all the time all the the violence in the environment and you see that your father is an alcoholic and your and he mistreats your your mom etc so you are in an environment where the crime is kind of there and you cannot avoid to be a criminal because you come from there If you apply it in a micro scene, it's that thing that your parents will tell you, like, be careful with the friends you hang out with because those may be a bad influence to you. That's why everybody wants their kids to play with the kids that are the good kids. Of course this can be also a little bit racist. Remember that Donald Trump was kind of associating the idea of Mexicans coming to New York to the United States and being rapists, drug dealers, etc. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists. Every time we see a movie about drug dealing everybody looks Latino. Every time we see a movie about... Violence may be set in a poor neighborhood or every time we see a movie about the Bronx we see that the Bronx is considered a dangerous neighborhood and they may assume that if you come from the Bronx your cultural transmission is giving you a lot of bad behavior that will make your fate unavoidably ending up in jail. We also have the social disorganization theory. This means that the moment the society is not efficient using all those social control measures, society naturally becomes deviant. The moment the city is getting bigger and the new neighborhoods they don't have police there and they don't know how to organize everything and everything looks like kind of messy. People feel more free to commit crimes We also have the labeling theory Society is kind of deciding what is a crime and what is not so some societies come from more sexist rules. Okay, so the moment a man is mistreating a woman is considered kind of regular. Back in the day, America was perceiving that a man that was abusing his power and sexually harassing a woman was something that was part of the system. Today, we decided that that's not the way of treating a woman, finally. Okay, but back in the day... It wasn't labeled as something bad, it was just that you were the alpha male and that was what you were supposed to do. Today, society is not only about the law, but society can be more powerful than law itself. So society, through Instagram or through Twitter, is creating those backlashes that are ruining some people's career. The moment you send an accusation on Twitter. and becomes viral we don't wait for the law to react we are already canceling that people career and companies are deciding that they don't want to be linked to that person that has that backlash on twitter etc so we have created a new way of labeling people that is a little bit dangerous okay in the case of harvey winston for instance was then a corresponded by a a real um a real punishment by the law, but sometimes we may be wrong and still we are doing that labeling theory. If you think about people that are in jail, the inmates still have some codes about what crime is worse than the other one. I don't know if you know this, but in jail the worst thing that you can do is to have committed child abuse. So even inside... the criminal world that's considered disgusting. A little bit from the interactionist point of view. According to the conflict theory, we have two things that we have to mention. One, that who do you think, according to conflict theory, that is always dividing in between bourgeoisie and proletariat, who do you think is making the law? All of you, the system that knows... so much you decide what's right or wrong the same way that you decide what's fun or not. The bourgeoisie are the ones that are taking hold of power so they create those laws. that sometimes are shaped based on their own approach to justice. So we, the proletariat, we don't have the opportunity, we don't have the voice to express what is our opinion about what they are deciding that is legal or illegal. Think about marijuana, for example. If you think how the drug abuse is completely unpunished in the higher level of society and the moment... you are a regular person, you're smoking a joint on the street, you will be fine and probably you will be arrested. Okay so that is how the powerful people write the law. A law that benefits them but not only this but also what we call the differential Justice. Even if justice is apparently the same for everybody, the bourgeois, they know the mechanism. They can pay a very expensive lawyer, and most likely they will get away with it. For us, every single thing that we do wrong, we pay for that. because we don't have the lawyer or because we don't know the system or because At some point we don't even know the the language to express ourselves to defend ourselves unfortunately Justice is not the same for everybody and the poorer you are the hardest is to have a fair treatment by justice. And finally we have crime. Crime is a violation of a criminal law. Okay we have misdemeanor. that are the ones that are you are against the law but it's not that terrible but at some point you can become a criminal if you are violating that criminal law victimless crime is the first kind of crime that we are going to study is when you're not harming physically person okay or when you are basically harming yourself it's illegal to gamble in in certain states so if you gamble you are a criminal but you are not actually killing someone you may say that as you are losing money or you are becoming addicted to to gamble you are affecting there are some victims that are your family that you are losing the money and you're not feeding your kids because of that but let's say that that would be a victimless crime or to try under the effects of alcohol. If you don't get to have an accident, police may stop you and if you have a high level of alcohol in your blood you may be a fine, you may be a criminal, but a victimless criminal. Crime can be for some people can be their job. We have professional crime, you can be a thief and that's your job. the thing you're that you're doing it's not that you are killing someone because you lost your nerves and you became a criminal and you went to jail for that but it's something that you really are a professional on doing that the next level of this of course is the organized crime we have seen thousands of movies about mobs mafia the sopranos we have seen the godfather we have seen the god fellas okay that's a world that can be fascinating from the point of view of fiction. Those are very powerful structures with hierarchy, with rules, with norms, and even values, but based on crime. We also have what we call the white collar crime that is also related to finance and cyber crime. You are not killing people, you are not let's say staining your hands while doing it, but you are doing a lot of financial Scams. Bernie Madoff is breaking his silence. The con man behind the biggest Ponzi scheme in history decided to speak out from his prison cell. You are a hacker and you are like taking a lot of money or a lot of data from people and harming them through that. But it's a crime that apparently is less violent and it tends to be done by wealthy or very educated people. So socially, unfortunately, it's not that punished. Also we have transnational crimes. Some crimes are organized around the globe. You are taking money from Dubai and putting it in a New York account. Or you can be a drug dealer that operates around the globe. So in those cases, international law has to apply. We have resources as claiming. some prisoners from different countries and finally we have hate crimes are based on... remember we were talking about ascribed and achieved status so most of the time it's based on an ascribed status when you are targeting African-American people and killing them when you are targeting LGBTQ people when you are targeting women, okay? it's based... Not on what other person has done, but what other person is. Goya being eaten, 15 in a car, 30 in an apartment, pointy shoes, red wearing, Menudo meet-a-meet-a, Puerto Rican cocksucker, yeah you! Think about how crime has been evolving through the years. Still today if I go to several countries, being a gay person or having a husband is illegal. I want to break free! I want to break free! Think about how, for example, we now face different ways of being criminal, like we are still evaluating how to punish revenge porn, for example. Back in the day nobody was recording themselves in intimacy. Okay, so we are updating all the time what is legal and what is not. And actually we have, if we go back to certain laws, we may think that are absurd. Back in the day it was illegal. to marry someone that was from a different race. Back in the day, it was illegal to work for a federal position if you were gay. Thank you for watching and let me know if you have any questions. You can both... comment or we can talk live now on blackboard. Thank you for watching!

Hello everybody, we have a new guest here. Finally I have the whiteboard so we are getting closer to the real experience. Today we are going to talk about crime, deviance and social control.

This is a new chapter where we are going to analyze the complexities of how society decides what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. We have to define the three concepts that are making this chapter. Deviance, crime and social control. So deviance is everything that we do that goes against social expectations. Social control are all the tools and strategies that society uses to avoid deviance.

Tools and strategies. And some... of those strategies are the actual laws that define what kind of deviant act is actually a crime let's start one by one deviance we are all deviant at some point okay the moment we are arriving late the moment we are behaving remember when we were talking about the roles behaving in a masculine way if we are women or in a feminine way if we are men. Every time we cross the street without waiting for the traffic light to be red.

Okay so those are like kind of mild deviants although deviants are... deviant behaviors are worse like we can be actual criminals, we can kill someone, etc. But deviants according to our friend Emil Durkheim is very linked to the idea of eunami. Remember that enemy was connected with that loss of direction once society has changed its values. The moment we feel disconnected from society, we also care less about if we are really obedient or if we are in conformity with that society.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. According to Emil Durkheim, deviance has two functions. One is to create order because it is important that we know what is expected and what is not, how to behave, how to be in compliance with all those norms that our society has.

Remember when we were studying culture that we were talking about norms? Norms are relevant again. The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. It is important for us to know...

that there's an order, that there are some norms, that the moment we go into the streets nobody's going to kill us because if they kill us they will pay for that so people will refrain themselves to commit that kind of crime. And the same about treating or mistreating people. The norm is that you treat properly everybody so every time we go to the streets we feel that we are safe because most of the people know the norms. Okay so that's the first function. Careful because it's good to have norms but sometimes the norms are Going behind what society actually wants.

Remember that we were saying that society tends to be conservative and we are evolving and we have to push society a little bit further to represent our actual values. They say stay down and we stand up. Shots me on the ground, the camera panned up.

King pointed to the mountaintop and we ran up. When we want to change society, we may push the norms that we have. We may...

It changed the understanding of what is deviant and what is not. Think about all the civil rights movements, they were changing the law, they were changing discriminating laws. When we achieved equal marriage, we were also changing the law. Before that, it was a deviant act to be a gay couple.

Before it comes, it will be out, it will be out. Without leaving the functionalist approach, if we talk about deviance, it is very important that we mention this guy, Robert Merton. He was kind of breaking down the idea of committing a deviant act in several categories. We have a chart that is based on the goals. of society regarding whatever and the means that society considers that are the right ones to achieve those goals.

So, according to Robert M. In the Merton, we have an only way of being non-debian, that is what we call conformity. That means that we... Agree with the goals and we agree with the means. Let's think about how what is the way of being successful in America Everybody wants to be successful.

We assume that we all want that and the means are supposed to be working very hard and Achieving and succeeding to do what you have to do and then you become like in conformity with the American dream Okay, that would be the only non-deviant behavior non-deviant Now we are going to start to talk about deviant behaviors. If we share the goal, meaning that you want to be successful, but you don't want to work hard, let's say that you rob a bank because you want the money and have that luxurious life, or maybe you drop school but you become a very famous person, or again, Kim Kardashian, okay? She's very successful. But in a very different way, it's not the example of American Dream.

She's kind of doing nothing and she's still very very famous. That is what we call innovation. You are creating a new way of being successful. Okay, this is, sorry, this is all deviant.

Okay, innovation. The same about Donald Trump. Donald Trump, you like him or not.

He created a new way of becoming the American president. He created a campaign that was based in politically incorrect way of doing things. He was delivering messages through Twitter instead of the regular press release. So he created a new way of becoming politically successful because he created new means for that.

We have other example that is when you... Share the means but you don't share the goals. You don't care about success but the truth is that you are working very hard. What's the point? That is what we call ritualism.

It means that you are doing things even if you don't believe in that. You're basically... you go with the flow.

So you don't want to fulfill the American dream but the truth is that the only way of surviving or the way you were taught to do things, it was working hard. It's not that you believe... in the system of meritocracy but what's the option?

We have someone that is actually against the goals and against the means. Okay, retweetism is when you don't share the goals, you don't share the means, so you basically don't work and don't want to be successful, so you decide to leave out the food stamps or the unemployment fund or just trying to get some welfare. money, like giving your back to society.

And finally we have where you are against the goals and the means but you work into creating new goals and new means. That is rebellion. I always use the example of the hippies.

The hippies in the 60s, they were against capitalism and they were against the war, they were against family values, so they created their own way of living. They were together in the same village or the same house. Like family was something more common, like people were kids like the children of almost everybody. They were against Vietnam war, they were against the market so they were cultivating their own tomatoes and they have they were having their own sheep so they could have a sustainable life. Remember this connects with the concept of counterculture that we explained before.

Let's use other example. You know that I like to use love to explain almost everything. So think that you have to be in love when you are young and you have to marry.

Okay, the goal is to be in love, to satisfy your sentimental life. The mean is to marry, have the best wedding ever. Okay, so let's say that you believe in love, okay, but you don't necessarily think that you have to be young to be in love or you don't want to get married. You live with your...

partner from so many years ago but you didn't feel the need to go to a church or even to the city clerk to declare your love official. Let's say the other way around. You don't believe in God. In love, but at some point you realize that you were like following the flow and you marry someone You can be the retreatist you can be retreated of love, you don't believe in love, you don't even try, you don't open your Tinder profile every time someone is flirting with you, you are not interested at all, etc.

Or regarding rebellion, imagine that you don't believe in love and you don't like the way it is conceived in our society, but you want to create a different system of love relationships based maybe on friendship or based maybe in living four people and creating a family all together and you try to re-evaluate you make the system accept like friendship relationships as official with benefits or to include as your husband or wife three people instead of just one it's about just feeding or not feeding the way society understands what are the goals and what are the means to achieve those goals okay i really like this part Just saying. When I talk about social control, as I was saying before, is that all the tools and strategies that society is displaying to avoid our deviant acts. Sometimes social control can be formal, and the same when we were talking about the norms in culture, this means that we have some laws, okay?

You can go to jail if you don't follow the rules. But we also have informal. Society doesn't want us to be deviant. Society wants us to be predictable, okay?

So we don't create surprise in society that always unbalances a little bit our social dynamic. Think about how your family is trying to make you study according to All your relatives, okay? If your father was a doctor and your grandfather was a doctor, they want you to be a doctor. You have forgotten.

No, you have forgotten who you are. So have forgotten me. If you are used to have a certain haircut and you decide one day to change it, people may bully you. Or the other way around.

They may tell you that they like it. okay because you look more like how they expect you to look it's also very connected with the idea of sanctions okay all the crimes are sanctioned but also the minimum deviant acts are are subject to be sanctioned as well now with the coronavirus situation they are thinking about finding people for being hanging out in the parks, groups that more than two people. Okay, so that would be a formal social way of social control.

Of course, it's not the same as committing a crime, but still is formal. If you think about the idea of fining people because they are in the parks, we understand, we think that it's reasonable that the state is trying to control the coronavirus spread. So they decide to repress that kind of behavior.

So we will be in conformity. But we also consider that they are right, that that social control measure makes sense, so we follow that rule, because we are actually convinced that that's the best thing to do for us and for our society. So that's conformity.

But of course, sometimes we disagree with the law, or we disagree with the social control. There's a difference between being in conformity with all those rules or all that social control and obey the social control because we may disagree but we don't want to get into trouble and this is almost the only chapter that is more making putting more weight on interactionism than in functionalism and conflict theory. The first theory that we are going to mention from the interactionist point of view is the cultural Transmission theory of deviance. The environment that we are raised in.

Remember if you have seen the movie La Haine, how they were in those ghettos, in those projects where... There's no way out. Everything that you want to do in order to be like to do something has to do with drug dealing with violence you are perceiving all the time all the the violence in the environment and you see that your father is an alcoholic and your and he mistreats your your mom etc so you are in an environment where the crime is kind of there and you cannot avoid to be a criminal because you come from there If you apply it in a micro scene, it's that thing that your parents will tell you, like, be careful with the friends you hang out with because those may be a bad influence to you. That's why everybody wants their kids to play with the kids that are the good kids.

Of course this can be also a little bit racist. Remember that Donald Trump was kind of associating the idea of Mexicans coming to New York to the United States and being rapists, drug dealers, etc. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists. Every time we see a movie about drug dealing everybody looks Latino. Every time we see a movie about...

Violence may be set in a poor neighborhood or every time we see a movie about the Bronx we see that the Bronx is considered a dangerous neighborhood and they may assume that if you come from the Bronx your cultural transmission is giving you a lot of bad behavior that will make your fate unavoidably ending up in jail. We also have the social disorganization theory. This means that the moment the society is not efficient using all those social control measures, society naturally becomes deviant. The moment the city is getting bigger and the new neighborhoods they don't have police there and they don't know how to organize everything and everything looks like kind of messy. People feel more free to commit crimes We also have the labeling theory Society is kind of deciding what is a crime and what is not so some societies come from more sexist rules.

Okay, so the moment a man is mistreating a woman is considered kind of regular. Back in the day, America was perceiving that a man that was abusing his power and sexually harassing a woman was something that was part of the system. Today, we decided that that's not the way of treating a woman, finally.

Okay, but back in the day... It wasn't labeled as something bad, it was just that you were the alpha male and that was what you were supposed to do. Today, society is not only about the law, but society can be more powerful than law itself. So society, through Instagram or through Twitter, is creating those backlashes that are ruining some people's career.

The moment you send an accusation on Twitter. and becomes viral we don't wait for the law to react we are already canceling that people career and companies are deciding that they don't want to be linked to that person that has that backlash on twitter etc so we have created a new way of labeling people that is a little bit dangerous okay in the case of harvey winston for instance was then a corresponded by a a real um a real punishment by the law, but sometimes we may be wrong and still we are doing that labeling theory. If you think about people that are in jail, the inmates still have some codes about what crime is worse than the other one. I don't know if you know this, but in jail the worst thing that you can do is to have committed child abuse.

So even inside... the criminal world that's considered disgusting. A little bit from the interactionist point of view.

According to the conflict theory, we have two things that we have to mention. One, that who do you think, according to conflict theory, that is always dividing in between bourgeoisie and proletariat, who do you think is making the law? All of you, the system that knows...

so much you decide what's right or wrong the same way that you decide what's fun or not. The bourgeoisie are the ones that are taking hold of power so they create those laws. that sometimes are shaped based on their own approach to justice. So we, the proletariat, we don't have the opportunity, we don't have the voice to express what is our opinion about what they are deciding that is legal or illegal.

Think about marijuana, for example. If you think how the drug abuse is completely unpunished in the higher level of society and the moment... you are a regular person, you're smoking a joint on the street, you will be fine and probably you will be arrested. Okay so that is how the powerful people write the law.

A law that benefits them but not only this but also what we call the differential Justice. Even if justice is apparently the same for everybody, the bourgeois, they know the mechanism. They can pay a very expensive lawyer, and most likely they will get away with it. For us, every single thing that we do wrong, we pay for that. because we don't have the lawyer or because we don't know the system or because At some point we don't even know the the language to express ourselves to defend ourselves unfortunately Justice is not the same for everybody and the poorer you are the hardest is to have a fair treatment by justice.

And finally we have crime. Crime is a violation of a criminal law. Okay we have misdemeanor. that are the ones that are you are against the law but it's not that terrible but at some point you can become a criminal if you are violating that criminal law victimless crime is the first kind of crime that we are going to study is when you're not harming physically person okay or when you are basically harming yourself it's illegal to gamble in in certain states so if you gamble you are a criminal but you are not actually killing someone you may say that as you are losing money or you are becoming addicted to to gamble you are affecting there are some victims that are your family that you are losing the money and you're not feeding your kids because of that but let's say that that would be a victimless crime or to try under the effects of alcohol. If you don't get to have an accident, police may stop you and if you have a high level of alcohol in your blood you may be a fine, you may be a criminal, but a victimless criminal.

Crime can be for some people can be their job. We have professional crime, you can be a thief and that's your job. the thing you're that you're doing it's not that you are killing someone because you lost your nerves and you became a criminal and you went to jail for that but it's something that you really are a professional on doing that the next level of this of course is the organized crime we have seen thousands of movies about mobs mafia the sopranos we have seen the godfather we have seen the god fellas okay that's a world that can be fascinating from the point of view of fiction.

Those are very powerful structures with hierarchy, with rules, with norms, and even values, but based on crime. We also have what we call the white collar crime that is also related to finance and cyber crime. You are not killing people, you are not let's say staining your hands while doing it, but you are doing a lot of financial Scams.

Bernie Madoff is breaking his silence. The con man behind the biggest Ponzi scheme in history decided to speak out from his prison cell. You are a hacker and you are like taking a lot of money or a lot of data from people and harming them through that. But it's a crime that apparently is less violent and it tends to be done by wealthy or very educated people.

So socially, unfortunately, it's not that punished. Also we have transnational crimes. Some crimes are organized around the globe. You are taking money from Dubai and putting it in a New York account. Or you can be a drug dealer that operates around the globe.

So in those cases, international law has to apply. We have resources as claiming. some prisoners from different countries and finally we have hate crimes are based on... remember we were talking about ascribed and achieved status so most of the time it's based on an ascribed status when you are targeting African-American people and killing them when you are targeting LGBTQ people when you are targeting women, okay?

it's based... Not on what other person has done, but what other person is. Goya being eaten, 15 in a car, 30 in an apartment, pointy shoes, red wearing, Menudo meet-a-meet-a, Puerto Rican cocksucker, yeah you! Think about how crime has been evolving through the years. Still today if I go to several countries, being a gay person or having a husband is illegal.

I want to break free! I want to break free! Think about how, for example, we now face different ways of being criminal, like we are still evaluating how to punish revenge porn, for example.

Back in the day nobody was recording themselves in intimacy. Okay, so we are updating all the time what is legal and what is not. And actually we have, if we go back to certain laws, we may think that are absurd.

Back in the day it was illegal. to marry someone that was from a different race. Back in the day, it was illegal to work for a federal position if you were gay.

Thank you for watching and let me know if you have any questions. You can both... comment or we can talk live now on blackboard.

Thank you for watching!

Transcript for:Exploring Crime, Deviance, and Control

Transcript for:
Exploring Crime, Deviance, and Control